briefermadness

Well, we finally left our old church. Tough decision, with a lot of tears and fears.

Tears: leaving the youth; leaving a few friends that remain there (not really "leaving," but, you know...); what will I do with myself when it's VBS time?; upset that people may be upset with us for having to make this decision;

Fears: that we're not doing the right thing; that we will never find where God wants us to be and we will get sucked into the cosmic void and vaporize; that we won't be able to find a place to "minister"; that our small group will drift apart.

Just looking at the two lists, the "tears" list is real and rational (those things are real and hurt), while the "fears" list is just a reflection of a lack of faith on my part. Do I really believe that God will abandon us and leave us in a cold and dry land? Nah.

In fact, Sue and I are looking at this as another great adventure. God's already placed a great possibility before us. A small church plant, close to where we live, called Water's Edge Covenant Church. WE (Water's Edge...not "us" we) has several elements that we might enjoy: 1) it will be based on small groups, daily fellowship and relationship, rather than mere Sunday go-to-meeting; 2) it's whole focus is outreach, stressing "belonging, then believing" rather than "believing, then belonging" (i.e.: love them into the Kingdom); 3) it is a church plant from the Evangelical Covenant denomination, a conservative, congregational, evangelical denomination that provides a "covering" to help prevent WE from moving into "error"; 4) GREAT community worship services (kinda Emmaus-class worship) that are contemporary (lookie there...young people who want to come to worship!), are open to all of the small group members, as well as anyone else who just wants to stop in; provide time for communion and personal prayer; allow freedom to minsiter and be ministered to, but still proceeds in an orderly manner; 5) is not "building" focused; 6) has a vision for ministry to the poor; 7) has a "that's a great idea you've got... go do it" attitude. I could go on... We're not sure where we're going to land yet, but we do feel like God's got his hand in this process.

Over the last few years I have been investigating the whole concept of home church, in all of its "emerging church" forms. The Water's Edge format is a middle way between traditional Sunday church and house church. It provides house church dynamics, protected with weekly group worship and outreach. One of the blogs I regularly read is by Alan Creech (http://www.vbcc.net/alancreech/). His most current blog has a couple of paragraphs that really touch my situation. Here he talks about the joys, fears and pitfalls of leaving his old church and venturing out into house church:

Alrighty then. My friend Steve and I were meeting on Monday night to talk, as we usually do. We drank some coffee and talked about this and that. Steve now has a group of people meeting in his home on Saturday nights to explore new ways of being the church with one another. We began exploring our backgrounds, which are in some ways very similar, and where we are now. We talked about not becoming bitter and not merely sitting around bitching about the old way - how after you get that out on the table, you need to move on or it will eat you alive.

Now, that picture. Funny, I just had to take that picture. We also talked about being called to a new "country" - a new "land" and being afraid to go there. Leaving the land of well-worn paths, not all of which are bad - but being called by God to go through a very narrow valley into a new place, an unfamiliar place with no paths yet worn. Steve is pointing to our visual aid of the narrow neck of territory that we must go through in order to get to the other side. This place is very uncomfortable, very tight indeed sometimes. There aren't really alot of provisions there, mostly rock and dirt with a few rivulets of water coming out of cracks in the walls. It's a place you want to get through, not stay in. And it kinda sucks while you're there. For this reason, many do not make it through. It's just too much. They retreat back to the familiar land and never quite see the open expanse they were called to on the other side of the narrow valley. It was a good talk. Encouraging for both of us. Oh yeah, going through this dry neck of land, this passageway, alone, is not the best idea. That rarely ends up well. God's Grace be with us.

Way to go Alan.